On the DICE stage, Machine Girl is raising holy hell. The singer even gets off the stage at one point, runs through the crowd and climbs onto the bar counter, continuing to writhe between screamo screams and blasts of percussion coming from the drummer left in his place. In the Boiler Room, Avalon Emerson’s elfin grace paints eighties drum machine landscapes over oneiric dream pop. In the massive clearing in front of the Estrella Damm stage, thousands of Blur fans are gathering, waiting for Damon Albarn to start the set with St. Charles Square.

Different stages, moods, and audiences are still united under the Primavera Sound banner. Yet, at that very moment, something is happening that not only doesn’t seem to be part of the festival, but also doesn’t seem to be part of this plane of reality. Bathed in darkness, Blackhaine casts powerful spells from the stage that, by some ancient arcane magic, end up conjuring up a thick blanket of smoke. The fog rises until it occupies every cubic centimetre of available air in the Warehouse. If you stretch your arm out in front of you, you don’t see your hand but feel your chest vibrate from the monstrous drones emitted by the subwoofers. The brain alarms the muscles: the result is a dopamine rush that I have never experienced at any Primavera edition. 

Perhaps because never before has the festival hosted and co-curated an entire stage with C2C Festival. It was an astral conjunction in full swing, under the protective wing of Stone Island: a brand that is not only investing heavily in music, but in good music. 

Thus was born the Stone Island Stage at the Warehouse, in an area that serves as a covered car park during the remaining 362 days of the year, when the Parc del Forum is not hosting one of Europe’s most significant music events. It could not be otherwise: C2C is Italy’s bigger indoor festival, famous for having as its headquarters the gigantic exoskeleton of the Lingotto, once the queen bee that gave birth to FIAT worker cars. That’s why, you know, a stage under the Barcelona sky would not have matched the essence of C2C Festival. What was needed was a dark corner to regenerate the senses, stunned by the crowds of people between stages. 

It was also beneficial for the two festivals to sub-contract the curatorship of the stage on the second, third and final day: respectively, to PAN and Hivern Discs—labels that are daughters of the minds of Bill Kouligas and John Talabot. 

So, having concluded an intoxicating first day with the obscure Anthropocene choreography of Blackhaine, the medieval synth dungeon of Heinali or the rhythmic calembourms of ABADIR & Hogir (very good), we were able to move on to the avant-pop of PAN. Kouligas also ended the evening with a DJ set. But only after giving total freedom of expression to incredible acts like Lala &ce and Low Jack, who appeared on stage with Le Diouck and rad cartier for a very entertaining performance. Especially considering that a rapper like Lala &ce is really famous in France, and here she is playing in the intimacy of a stage in close contact with the audience. Tzusing’s DJ set was also overwhelming, between techno palettes and elements steeped in Malaysian influences, his home country. In this sense, I have always adored the pro-Asian character of PAN, which in its roster is restoring the right light to a continent that is no longer only economically and technologically dominant, but also artistically.

To close a perfectly successful experiment was the Saturday curated by Talabot and his Hivern Discs. Unlike Kouligas, who—among other things—was celebrating his label’s 15th anniversary, the Barcelona musician does not play on stage, but gives his artists carte blanche for performance. Absolutely worth remembering: Ubaldo and what he himself, with a good deal of irony, calls napcore—which is actually a sublimely rarefied and extremely conciliatory version of pop. Ambient-pop, let’s say. Something very bright, however, when compared to the ominous sounds of Drift Institute, as if they came from a silicon and metal reproduction of Plato’s cave. 

We don’t know whether this creature of Primavera Sound, C2C Festival and Stone Island was a one-shot adventure or the beginning of something long-lasting. What matters is the result. Strictly speaking, the next move would be an outdoor Primavera Sound stage outside C2C Festival at Lingotto. Although, it might be a little cooler in Turin in November. But let us dream.